


steal a kiss in the dark

by cockybasketball



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, This is ridiculous, criminal!louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockybasketball/pseuds/cockybasketball
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Are you actually okay?” says Nick, absolutely dumbfounded. “You just want to, what, sleep in here with me?”</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Louis raises his head then. He gives Nick a once-over, and then says, looking slightly unimpressed, “Suppose it’s better than being attacked by whoever’s in your kitchen.”</i>
</p><p>Or, Louis' a house burglar and, upon breaking into Nick's home, he gets a little more than he bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	steal a kiss in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> i finished something! it's complete and utter hogwash, but it's _complete_ , and that's the main thing.  
> inspired by [this post](http://fartgallery.tumblr.com/post/53874276332/hey-guys-i-know-its-the-middle-of-the-night-and-im). title taken from a love like war by all time low.  
> 

“Excuse me?” says an unfamiliar voice right in Nick’s ear, as a hand shakes firmly at his shoulder. “Oh. Oh, you are actually drooling, lovely. Look, err, I’m gonna need you to wake up, mate.”

Nick makes a strangled noise into his pillow, rolls over, distilling the hand from his shoulder. “Go ‘way,” he groans. “Five more minutes.”

Fingers begin to poke at him increasingly harder, nails digging in harshly even as Nick tries to squirm away, and the owner of the hand lets out a sigh and says, “C’mon, man, up and at ‘em.”

It takes about another thirty seconds of this stranger’s incessant prodding and Nick’s indignant groaning before Nick remembers, quite abruptly, that he lives alone; that it’s the middle of the night and that his house should theoretically be devoid of all human beings except for him. Strangely, after that sudden realisation he finds it a lot less difficult to will himself out of bed.

Nick flounders, scrambling to his feet and throwing an arm out to reach for the light switch on his nightstand, almost falling to the floor in the process. Given that he’s still mostly out of it, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with his free hand, he commends himself on the fact that it only takes him three tries to flick the light on, illuminating the room and revealing the man standing on the other side of it.

“Thank God,” says the man (well, boy, really. There’s a light stubble across his jaw and his haircut ages him considerably – fairly long, shaggy, fringe pushed to one side, away from his face – but he’s short, lean, boyish; can’t be much older than early twenties. Sort of cute in a stranger-in-your-house-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of way), and he actually sounds relieved even as Nick just _stares_ at him, utterly dumbfounded. “I don’t wanna alarm you, mate–”

“Probably a bit late for that,” Nick _shouts_ , cutting the guy off mid sentence. He stumbles backwards a bit, fumbling behind him in search of something – _anything_ – that he can use to defend himself against this lunatic. “What the _fuck_ are you doing in my house?!”

The boy looks slightly panicked at the sheer volume of Nick’s voice, which is utterly bizarre, eyes going wide and almost fearful. You’d think, considering he’s just broken into a complete stranger’s house, he would’ve expected a reaction on a similar scale to this when he tried to wake up the owner. “Just keep the noise _down_ , would you–”

“Who the fuck _are_ you?!” Nick squawks, interrupting him again, waving his arms in the air.

“Oh, how rude of me,” the boy says dryly with a roll of his eyes. “My name is Louis, now if you could please just calm down–”

“ _Calm down_?” Nick bellows, staring at him incredulously. “How the _hell_ do you expect me to _calm down_ when–”

Throwing his arms up in frustration, Louis sighs and clambers up onto Nick’s bed, kneeling up on it so he can slap a hand over Nick’s mouth. Nick goes to shove at him, but Louis’ too quick, grabbing both of Nick’s wrists in his free hand and holding them together incredibly well for someone with such small, dainty fingers. “Just be fucking _quiet_ , okay?” he snaps, voice hushed. “I _was_ trying to rob you” – he cuts off to glare pointedly at Nick as he lets out a muffled squeal – “but that hasn’t gone exactly to plan. There are, uh, some really distressing noises coming from your kitchen.”

Nick just blinks at him, baffled. There’s a burglar in his room, an actual burglar, dressed in black from head to toe and probably - let's be realistic - carrying some form of weapon on him somewhere, with a hand covering Nick’s mouth, informing him calmly that, actually, he may not be the only one to have broken in tonight; there is potentially someone else downstairs, and someone even more dangerous, by the sound of it.

Louis waits, watching Nick carefully for a minute before he raises an eyebrow and, still looking a little apprehensive, slowly lowers his hand from Nick’s face. “So I’m jacking your laptop, right,” he says, conversationally, voice still barely above a whisper, “easy enough, and then I hear this, like, groaning sound coming from the other end of the hall–”

“It’s probably,” Nick starts, then cuts off, flexing his wrists against Louis’ grip. “It’s probably just the dog, or somet,” he tries again, voice a little shaky. “Just take whatever you want and go, okay, I’m not gonna stop you.”

Louis scoffs, letting go of Nick as he hops up off the bed and strolls around to the end of it. Nick watches the way he moves so carefully, slinking through the darkness, light on his feet and noiseless; Nick’s a heavy sleeper regardless, but even if he wasn’t he doubts he’d have heard this kid make his entrance. “That’d be this dog here, I take it?” Louis quips, pointing out the snoring pile of pup curled up at the end of Nick’s bed. “And no, mate, there’s no fucking way I’m going back down there.”

Nick blinks at him. Once, and then again, as Louis stares back at him, eyebrows raised expectantly. “I,” Nick begins, and then gives up, utterly flabbergasted.

“Okay, well, look,” Louis chirps, plopping himself down on the end of the bed and scratching gently behind Puppy’s ears, “I’m sure as hell not leaving the way I came in, and that’s a pretty big drop out your window, so, it’s looking like you’re stuck with me.”

Following this is a long silence in which Nick just _stares_ at this bizarre fuckwit of a man in disbelief. Louis doesn’t look up, or seem even the slightest bit bothered that he’s apparently _off his fucking head_ , just keeps petting the dog, cooing gently.

“Are you actually okay?” says Nick, absolutely dumbfounded, quieter than he had been before. “You just want to, what, sleep in here with me?”

Louis raises his head then. He gives Nick a once-over, and then says, looking slightly unimpressed, “Suppose it’s better than being attacked by whoever’s in your kitchen.”

“You’re telling me that there is someone _in my kitchen_ – but you don’t know who, because apparently you didn’t think to check,” Nick scoffs, ignoring Louis’ jibe completely, his hands doing most of the talking for him as he wafts them around in the air, “and you just want to hide up here? Should we not call the police, or something?”

Louis actually laughs at that, and Nick could _cry_ , because what the hell is going on. “Yeah, sure,” Louis says dryly, “if you wanna call the police and explain to them why you’re housing a wanted criminal in your bedroom, be my guest.”

That’s cool too, then. This kid is _wanted_ , probably pretty fucking dangerous, and he’s sat at the end of Nick’s bed, stroking his dog and asking if he can just _stay here_ for the night – except he’s not even asking, though, is he? He’s forcing his company upon Nick because, lo and behold, there is _another_ stranger in his house downstairs.

“Yeah? And what’s to stop me turning you in as well?” Nick says, after a pause, much quieter now, but with a lot more confidence. Louis looks up at him, one eyebrow raised, and he doesn’t say anything but his morale has visibly slipped. “I’m not housing you, you fucking broke in.”

Louis eyes him for a minute, quietly considering, before he says, voice tinted with a sliver of uncertainty, “You’re not going to do that.”

Nick considers. In the time it’ll take the police to get here, this kid has the potential to do him all sorts of damage; Nick doesn’t trust him, of course he doesn’t, not to pull a knife on him the second he’s ended the call. He has no reason _to_ trust that Louis won’t do that, but when he weighs it up, takes into account the fact that Louis has no exit planned, it seems unlikely. If he can’t escape, he’s not going to do anything to make the situation any worse for when the police arrive.

A marginally ominous silence hangs in the air between the two of them, Louis watching Nick intently and Nick staring straight back with raised eyebrows. Louis nibbles lightly on his bottom lip, deep in thought, before he breathes out, curses, and starts to speak. “Fine, fine,” he lets out finally, rising to his feet and crossing over to the window, peeking past the curtains and glancing out of it. Puppy makes a disgruntled noise as his hand leaves her fur. “I’ll go downstairs, find out who it is. Just don’t fucking call them.”

“I’m coming with you,” Nick says, stubbornly, and Louis just shrugs, turning back around to look at him briefly, a thunderous expression on his face, before he starts to walk towards the door. Nick grabs his phone off his bedside table, just in case, then follows suit.

They cross onto the landing and begin to move towards the stairs, slowly, deadly quiet, while Nick just _prays_ that Puppy won’t fully wake up and start following them, yapping as she goes. It’s pitch black bar the moonlight trickling in through the bathroom window, and while Louis seems to be navigating just fine, Nick’s tiptoeing even slower for fear of tripping or knocking something over.

“This area’s normally so fucking easy,” Louis grunts in an irritable whisper, potentially speaking more to himself than to Nick, “because you’re all fucking loaded, and it isn’t even slightly reflected by the complexity of your security systems. Any other house and I’d have been in and out in five minutes, tops.”

Nick’s not sure how to respond to that, whether to perhaps apologise, so he ignores it. He has to admit he’s sort of panicking, a little bit; Louis’ clearly experienced when it comes to breaking and entering, but wandering into the unknown, seemingly completely unprepared, Nick doesn’t have all that much faith in him. “Um,” he starts, voice hushed. “What’s actually your game plan here, pal?”

Louis turns to look at him scrutinisingly, nose scrunching up in a way that Nick refuses to admit is adorable, eyebrows pinching together as his mouth pulls into a frown. He holds that expression for a second or so longer, and then sighs, deflating, letting his features even themselves out again. “No fucking idea,” he hisses, shrugging, as he begins to edge his way down the stairs. “Whoever it is must’ve come in behind me, ‘cause they weren’t there when I got here, but I have no clue who it could’ve been.”

“What, like, followed you?” Nick asks uncertainly. He watches Louis shrug in response, taking one step at a time, soft soles of his shoes barely making a sound on the carpet beneath his feet. Louis still doesn’t look all that phased by any of this, particularly considering how apparently scared he is about leaving the same way he came in – he’s ever so calm, noiseless, in his element, where Nick’s bottom lip is wobbling fervently even as he traps it between his teeth.

“Dunno,” he responds after a moment or so. “Doubt it, but there’s no way of checking ‘cause I disabled your CCTV before I came in.”

Nick groans out an “Of course you did,” under his breath, but Louis just shushes him, stilling as he approaches the kitchen door.

The pair of them stand out there in the hall for a minute, Louis listening intently and Nick nibbling nervously on his fingernails, in complete silence, no sound coming from the kitchen, until Nick eventually whispers, “We doing this then, or what?”

Louis rounds on him, eyes wide and mouthing something that looks like “Shut the fuck up,” before he whips back around and creeps carefully closer to the door.

Nick rolls his eyes, shoving his phone into his back pocket (pyjamas with pockets! A godsend if ever there was), and steps forward in front of Louis, gently pushing the door open. Louis curses at him and makes some furious, disbelieving noises, and then, abruptly and a little stupidly, falls silent. They stand there in silence for a good thirty seconds, just staring, before Nick reaches over and slaps Louis upside the head, saying, disbelievingly, “You absolute fucking imbecile.”

Louis squawks indignantly and hisses out a “Hey!” but he doesn’t say anything in his defence, cheeks a little bit pink as he stares, a little incredulously, at the cat perched in the middle of the kitchen table, licking her paws and staring straight back at the pair of them. Nick’s not sure who, Louis or the cat, looks more confused.

“In fairness, you didn’t mention you had a cat,” Louis points out eventually, still sounding a little sheepish. 

“She’s next door’s,” Nick says tiredly, crossing over to the table and lifting the little ginger fluffball into his arms. He gives her a brief tickle behind the ears before he strolls towards the back door on the other side of the kitchen, opening it and letting her down, shooing her. “Always climbing over the fence into my garden, that cat,” he goes on, and then, eyeing the open window, continues, “Guessing she snuck in behind you.”

“Oops?” Louis tries, gingerly stepping into the kitchen and flopping down into a stool.

“You wanna take another look around?” Nick asks a tad sourly, shooting a dirty look at Louis. “Check in all the cupboards, see if any other creatures are hiding out in here?”

He’s a little bit peeved, really, because it’s 3.27am (as the clock on the cooker helpfully informs him) and he’s had pretty much the fright of his life, being woken up by a complete stranger all because of a _cat_. He supposes, though, that had it not been for Amber creeping in after Louis and scaring him half to death, he’d have just stolen large amounts of Nick’s money and belongings and fucked off straight away. You win some, you lose some.

He wafts a hand at Louis dismissively when the boy tries to open his mouth again, too tired for any of this now, and offers him a cuppa instead. Louis accepts and Nick busies himself with filling two mugs while Louis chatters away, obviously still a little embarrassed.

“No idea what she was doing in here before, though,” he says, “because the fucking racket she was making, I swear.” Nick just shrugs, and Louis goes on. “God, I’m an idiot. Could’ve been out of here in no time and you’d have been none the wiser.”

Nick raises an eyebrow at him as he turns around, sliding a mug in front of Louis. He passes him the milk, too, but the truly scandalised expression on his face when Nick tries to offer him the sugar causes him to shut it right back in the cupboard. “How does one get into a career in burglary, anyway?” he asks, taking a sip from his own tea.

“Y’ever seen The Bling Ring?” Louis says as he gets up to put the milk back in the fridge. When he walks back over he stays standing, lent against the counter next to Nick. “Based on a true story, innit? I figured if a bunch of teenagers could break into a billionaire’s house, like, eight times before getting arrested, it can’t be that difficult.”

Nick hasn’t seen it, but he gets the gist. He wonders, idly, how many houses Louis’ broken into, and why he chose Nick’s, of all those on this street; it’s far from the largest, and he probably could’ve scrounged up a lot more cash from going somewhere else. Louis’ probably thinking the same thing, though, Nick thinks – picking any other house could’ve caused him a lot less bother.

They chat and sip for a while. It should be a little bit weird (scratch that, it shouldn’t be _happening_ ) because Louis’ a criminal and Nick knows virtually nothing about him or what he’s capable of, but it’s not; he’s fairly easy to talk to, when he’s not rolling his eyes at every other word Nick says, and his laugh is really kind of cute. It’s hurting Nick’s head a bit, because he’s cackling rather loudly and it’s _half three in the morning_ , but it’s cute, nonetheless. 

Louis giggles a little more, all bright smiles and shining eyes, and then he’s placing his almost-empty mug down on the counter. They’re already close enough to touch, because Louis’ been elbowing him insistently for the past ten minutes, but then he slides a little closer, slipping an arm around Nick’s waist and looking up at him with bright blue eyes. Nick fixes him with a curious, unsure expression, and Louis smiles wider, pushing up on his tiptoes to press their lips together.

It’s– unexpected, is what it is. It’s by no means an unpleasant surprise, because Nick’s been thinking since Louis arrived that, yeah, he’d maybe fancy him if he were a little less terrified. It does come a little out of the blue, though, but he's not complaining.

Louis tugs Nick’s mug out of his hands and presses in even closer now that it’s out of the way, his hands resting on Nick’s hips. He licks across Nick's bottom lip lightly, teasing, and lets out the softest of whimpers as Nick laces his fingers through his hair. He smiles against Louis’ mouth, tugging him closer still.

Nick definitely, absolutely does not whine when Louis pulls back and detaches himself, smiling apologetically and saying, with a ‘what can you do’ kind of look on his face, “I need to go, mate.”

Nick leans down to kiss him again briefly and Louis indulges him, running a hand through Nick’s hair and kissing him back fiercely. He detaches again, though, grinning, and reaches over for his mug, downing the last dregs before he turns towards the open window. If Nick struggles to tear his gaze away from the kid’s arse as he’s walking away, he’s the only one who has to know.

“Thanks for not calling the police,” Louis says as he hops up onto the window ledge, half-turning as though he’s adding it as an afterthought. “Soz for getting you out of bed.”

He throws a wink over his shoulder and looks Nick up and down one last time, before he’s leaving, slipping out of the window onto the grass below it and slinking away into the night.

Still a little disbelieving that _any_ of the last half an hour actually happened, Nick finishes off his tea and washes their mugs up, shaking his head. 

It’s not until he thinks back to Louis’ mouth on his, to his small hands resting just below Nick’s hips, that Nick realises his phone is no longer in the back pocket of his pyjama bottoms. He freezes, imagining small, nimble fingers nipping in there unnoticed while Louis’ lips have him distracted. Nick checks both pockets, frantic, but he’s not really expecting to find anything; he knows both Louis and his phone are long gone by now.

“Bastard,” he hisses under his breath, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d swear he could hear the sound of Louis’ laughter ringing out along his deserted, sleeping street.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks!! love u. i'm on tumblr @ gonerad, come say hi.


End file.
